Pres Longley, the “Bard of Butte,” wrote many columns and poems for the newspapers. This column appeared in the Weekly Butte Record on December 26th, 1868. It’s lengthy, so I am just going to give you the beginning, and the part addressed “to the juvenile readers of the Record about Santa Claus.”

Eighteen hundred and sixty-eight years have passed away, since the Star of Christ arose on the sin-stricken world; and when we look back, through the medium of history, at the events of the past, we feel grateful to the Giver of every good and perfect gift that it is our let to live in this enlightened age.

In spite of the troubles of this old world, Pres encouraged his readers to live in gratitude and good cheer. He then tells a story for his juvenile readers, of a “lazy girl” who hung up her stocking on Christmas Eve, and found nothing in it in the morning but the following two lines:

Your stocking is dirty, I’ll put nothing in it,
Till you wash out the dirt; ’twill take but a minute.

But another girl, who kept her stockings clean, had better luck, and here is her poem:

This young lady found “a gold specimen and a piece of poetry” in her stocking. Now that’s something I would like to find in my stocking, a nugget of gold, “as pure and as bright / as the stars that illumine the darkness of night.”

The ocean's great billows have rolled o'er its bed,
And murmured sad dirges as though it were dead,
Till they sang themselves hoarse, then rolled far away,
Still leaving it wrapped in its mantle of clay.
Then take it and keep it – ‘tis fresh from the mine,--
And, like this bright token, endeavor to shine.
 Dec. 25th, 1868		SANTA CLAUS

May we all “endeavor to shine” and make this world a better place. Have a merry and joyful Christmas!